Annotate PDF's Together in Google Meet with Kami

When in a Google Meet video conference with a student, a colleague, or any other participant, sometimes you may need to work on a PDF together.

For example, I have heard from teachers wanting to do tele-therapy sessions with a student where the child needs to practice tracing letters or shapes on exiting PDF worksheets.

There are many tools for annotating a PDF, but what would be great would be something that is free, easy to use, and allows for real time collaboration between people. Well thankfully there is an excellent option with Kami.

Kami is a website for PDF annotation found at kamiapp.com. It is a great match for this need for many reasons:

• It can be used on its own or right along side of Google Meet.
• You can sign in with your existing Google account.
• You can upload any PDF you would like to work on.
• You can then send a link to a student, colleague, or other collaborator.
• That person can access the PDF with just the link you sent, and without having to sign into anything.
• You and your participant can then write and draw on the PDF in real time.
• And it is all free!

To help demonstrate all the details of this process, I have recorded a short 5-minute video, which you can view below.

Give Remote Control in Google Meet with One Click!

Google Meet provides a lot of ways to interact with others in your meeting. You can see other people, and speak with them, and text chat with them, and present your screen to them. However, sometimes we need more interaction than that.

For example it would be great to be able to give remote control of your computer and mouse to another person in the meeting, or to take control of someone else's computer. This could be useful if you wanted your student to do an activity on your computer in a teletherapy session, or if you need to give or receive technology support.

Unfortunately Google Meet does not have a built-in option to give remote control over to another person. Thankfully Google has provided an incredibly simple tool that can be used right along with Google Meet to accomplish this. That tool is called Chrome Remote Desktop.

To help with this I have recorded a quick 11-minute video that explains this in detail by covering three topics:

• First, how to install the Chrome Remote Desktop extension.
• Second, the normal method for using this tool to give remote control of your computer and mouse to someone else
• And third, a secret trick for a super easy and fast method to use this tool that will let even the youngest student control your mouse with a single click. That's right, just one click.

See below for the video...

3 Ways to See Your Students when Presenting in Google Meet

One of the great features of Google Meet is the ability to share your screen with your students or other meeting participants. This allows you to present a slideshow, navigate a website, work out a math problem, show a video, or provide any sort of instruction.

The problem is, once you share your screen to begin presenting, all you can see is, well... what you are presenting and not your students or audience anymore. This can make it difficult to stay connected to your students, assess their understanding, monitor their engagement, and take questions.

Thankfully there are several options for how you can stay connected with your students while presenting your screen. To demonstrate this I have recorded a short 7-minute video that shows 3 different ways to still see your students when you are presenting your screen in Google Meet.

Google Meet is now integrated in Google Classroom!

In an earlier blog post and video I explained how you can use Nicknames when creating a Google Meet to keep students from joining the Meet before you, or from rejoining the Meet after you have left. (You can see the post and video here.)

That method still works great, especially for those people who do not use Google Classroom at all, or if you are inviting students to a Meet who are not part of your Google Classroom. However for those who use Google Classroom, we now have a new easy option for managing Meets with your students!

In general here's how it works…

• For each Google Classroom you have, you can now generate a unique Google Meet link for the students in that Classroom. 
• The link for the Meet can be displayed on the Stream page and the Classwork page of the Classroom so you and your students can access it easily. 
• You can use the same Meet link over and over again anytime you want to video conference with your students. 
• However, the students cannot join the Meet without you, so they can't access the Meet before you are there, or rejoin the Meet after it is over and you have left. 

See below for detailed directions on how to use this feature, as well as a short 6-minute video that demonstrates all the steps.

Whiteboard Tools for Google Hangouts Meet

When you are in a video conference like Google Hangouts Meet, a valuable tool to have is a digital interactive whiteboard. You can use this to give instruction, like a math teacher working out a problem, or it can be collaborative where everyone in the meeting is working together to brainstorm or design or complete an interactive activity.

Unfortunately Google Meet does not have a built-in whiteboard tool. However, there are many excellent whiteboard tools that can be used with Google Meet. For example, two great Google tools that can be use as digital whiteboard in Meet are Google's Chrome Canvas and Google Jamboard.

To show how to use these tools, and specifically how to use them inside of a Google Meet for teaching as well as collaborating with students, I recorded a short 8-minute video. See below for the video and related resource links.

How to Keep Students from Joining or Rejoining a Google Meet without You

Google Hangouts Meet is a great tool for teachers to connect with students in a video conference, for instruction, questions, presentations, and more.

However it is understandable that many schools would prefer not to have students in a school-provided video conference without the teacher present. That is, schools may not want students to be able to join a Meet before the teacher gets there, or be able to rejoin a Meet after the teacher has left. Thankfully Google has provided an option to manage this.

To help with this I have recorded a short 7-minute video explaining how to do manage this. However, be aware there are some settings that your tech administrators need to adjust before this will work. I have made a separate video just for the tech admins which can be found in my other blog post on "How to Keep Students from Starting or Recording a Meet".

Now assuming that your tech folks have adjusted the settings they need to change, see below for the video on how you as a teacher can keep students from joining a Meet before you, or after you have left the meeting.

NOTE: If you use Google Classroom, Google has just rolled out a new integration that lets you create a unique Meet link for each of your classes, which you and your students can easily access in Classroom, but your students can't join the Meet without you being there. I have created a video and blog post with all of those directions here: "Google Meet is now integrated in Google Classroom"

See Everyone with the Google Meet Grid View Extension

Google Hangouts Meet is a great video conference tool for connecting people... but what about when there are a lot of people in the meeting?

Normally when you are in a Google Meet video conference, you can only show at most 4 people at a time. You do this by clicking the three dots button in the bottom right corner and choosing "Change Layout", and then selecting the "Tiled" view. But what if you want to see everyone in the Meet?

Thankfully there is a free Chrome extension called "Google Meet Grid View" that allows you to see everyone in the meeting, no matter how many people there are. See below for details on how to install and use this helpful extension, including a short 6-minute video with step-by-step directions.

Video Series: How to Use Google Meet

Google Meet is an easy but powerful tool for video conferencing. With Meet you can connect with other people using any device including a PC, Mac, Chromebook, smart phone, or tablet. While in the video conference you can chat, share your screen, turn on closed captioning, and even record the meeting.

Google Meet is a great tool for schools for remote instruction, after-hours help, virtual parent meetings, bringing an expert into class, connecting with other classes around the world, or recording lessons.

To help schools make the most out of Meet, I have put together a series of videos on how to use this tool. My goal for these videos is to keep them as short as possible, and have each one cover just a few topics. This way users can find just the information they need and can watch it quickly.

I plan to continue adding more videos to this series, so please let me know what Google Meet topics or questions you would like me to address in a future video. See below for the current list of my Meet help videos.

5 Google Tools for Staff Professional Development

In schools we are always looking for creative ways to offer meaningful professional development to staff. This might mean:

• Flexible PD where staff can participate at a time of day or day of the week that works best for them
• Interactive PD where staff can communicate with others, share ideas, ask questions, and more
• Engaging PD with the use of multimedia to go beyond typical text or slideshows

There are certainly dozens of excellent technology tools to use for delivering professional development, and we should try out a wide variety to discover which ones work best for our staff, content, and goals. Many of the free Google tools can lend themselves to providing flexible, interactive, and engaging PD. In this blog post we will take a brief look at five possible Google tools to use:

• Google Hangout
• Google Hangouts on Air
• Google Classroom
• Google Communities
• Google Sites

See below for details on each of these tools, ideas for use in delivering professional development, and additional resources to help you learn more.

5 Fantastic Fluency Tools for Speaking World Languages

Back when I was in high school (let’s not mention how long ago) I took four years of French. I felt I was reasonably proficient in the language, being able to read, write, and speak in French. Of course you would think I should be after four years.

Well, it turns out much of my success was due to the fact I was only communicating with other classmates in my small farm town. This became painfully clear to me when as a Senior I went on the French Club trip to Canada. When I actually came face to face with people who spoke French fast and fluently, my “C’est la vie” became “Say the what?” I quickly realized that I had a lot of head knowledge but greatly lacked practical fluency.

Thankfully one of the great powers of technology is breaking down the barriers between people regardless of language or distance. One way to help achieve this is by using technology tools to develop, practice, and improve our students' spoken fluency in a world language.

See the rest of the post below to learn about five fantastic Google tools, features, and extensions to help with improving your students' world language fluency.

Creating Video PD with Free Google Tools

Whether you are a technology trainer, teacher, administrator, or anyone involved in education, one question we are always asking is how can we improve the quality and impact of our professional development. We face many challenges including:

• Schedules - finding time when people can meet
• Travel - getting everyone together in one place
• Levels - moving at a pace that is not too fast for some or too slow for others
• Resources - there is only one of you and hundreds (thousands?) of them

As a technology integration specialist, and a Google Certified Trainer and Innovator, I have struggled with the same concerns. Back in December of 2014 I tried something new to help address this need. I used free Google tools to create, deliver, assess, and track video professional development.

Below you will find loads of information about how I did this, as well as free resources you can use to do this yourself. You can watch the one-hour training video below, view the slideshow, read the rest of the post, and check out all the linked templates and resources.